training

I don't have a lot of data here, but I certainly know that I have bonked plenty of times and not enjoyed skating at that moment. However, some research in the last couple of years with (not exactly) fasting has been interesting. I watched a BBC special with eebee about fasting on alternate days (named variously but lately called the 5:2 diet), but I never tried that. (Neither did I specifically try the high intensity training 3 x 20 mins per week that was in another special with the same BBC correspondent, Michael Mosley, but seriously, that's what my skating is like some weeks.) I tend to feel it's a great idea to have breakfast before and endurance event, and I guess the most often workable thing has been dried cranberries and oatmeal with enough water to undry the oatmeal and the cranberries. I also note they mention the only eat during 16 hours of the day idea I've heard lately.

So I mainly added this marker so we could comment on it. Any thoughts?

Available in ROYGBVM and this year's mystery color (latter for $10 less). Supersweet 19" zip. Comfy wicking fabric. 3 pockets on back. All that. Injected with skateylove yes and grateful to be skateful.

We did 50 miles rolling out at 2:36p. Getting ready in the mile 0 parking lot we both thought it felt hotter than any time we had been there.

Somehow I ended up looking at skate videos on Youtube again. Here'1s more from Kevin Jagger (Mr. LongTrackLongShot.com) - the guy who jacked it all in with his day job to concentrate on trying to make it in the longtrack ice world.

So here we are in the Preseason, per Rob Bell's Periodization article I referred to for the Offseason. This should be a six week block of low-intensity technique work (drills), and cross-training (if you like that sort of thing).

Just as I feared, the Offseason threw me out of my routine and into a funk-and-a-half. So it's taking me some time to get into the Preseason groove. Although there is something alluring about having nothing to do for half an hour except focus on rolling on one skate around half the football field (paved track).

Lose all what, exactly? I can't say that this year's training and peaking event season has left me particularly buff, but I would like to retain what little muscle-tone and muscle-memory I did achieve. After some digging around online, I found an article by Rob Bell on inlineplanet, uploaded a few years ago: Periodization Training, Part 1: How to Make the Most of Your Training.

This article reminds us of some simple ideas but with some testing to back it up. Even in sports requiring lots of sprinting, there are moments that depend on endurance. In roadskating and roadcycling, that's certainly true, especially in the distances we love, some of us. The basic idea was to test whether watching relatively neutral documentary shows vs. taking a fairly mentally tough test would produce an effect on subsequent endurance athletic tests.

Although the cognitive test didn’t produce any physical fatigue, the volunteers gave up on the cycling test 15 per cent sooner when they were mentally fatigued compared to when they had simply watched the documentaries.

This weekend we hoped to do lots of miles roadish and as mentioned yesterday (http://roadskater.net/how-i-wasted-or-enjoyed-morning-danny-macaskill-tr...), we bailed on the training ride and ended up feeling OK about doing alternative activities. But we still needed to skate. So we went for Indian food, then went for a walk in the Dollar Tree, ha, then decided to check the weather.

It was windy with some threats of rain, but the radar was clear so far, so we headed up for Country Park. When we got there, we caught a ride on the tram, which was driven by Geoff, who played dixieland jazz on the CD player for passengers in the tram. We told Geoff we were thinking about inline skating but wanted to check out the road junk first.

Greensboro's Country Park was hosting the Triad Classic Chevy Club's 17th Annual Car Show yesterday, so for our still-delinquent training miles last evening we needed to come up with an alternative.

Roadskater drove us to the Target parking lot on Lawndale Drive, Greensboro, and we parked close to the gigantic brick, former-Sears Distribution Center building and donned skates. I felt excited at the prospect of exploring, and skating somewhere new.

The initial half-mile of our trek provided smooth-as-ice asphalt under wheel, to the trailhead behind the Target. Even though the beginning of the trail is rather narrow and bumpy with two-foot-tall fire hydrants smattered here and there, sometimes in the middle of the path, the trail still gets you from A to B away from shoppers and cars. Almost 2 miles down the trail we joined up with the gnarly, roots-ridden path near the Lewis Recreation Center on Forest Lawn Drive and headed off North.

I added a new sidebar section on training and some titles look pretty good, but I did not expect too much when I clicked on the article below from fireengineering.com, but I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, it's a simple introduction, but sometimes that is what we need...simple...not easy...and a reminder that training is how we stay fit, but also how we prepare for a variety of situations, especially athletic events.

Eddy's coming back to Greensboro for his legendary skating workshop! April 9-11.

Sign up now, before all the spots are taken! The announcement email is below, with all the links you need...

We managed to get Eddy Matzger to add us to his schedule again this year (thanks to Skatey-Mark for the boost). in between trips to China he'll take the 2 and a half hour journey down from Floyd, VA for a roadshow outdoor inline speedskating workshop in Greensboro NC this year!